Topics covered in this article:
- Is the Bible sacred?
- The Bible as a fetish object.
- The difference between the Bible and the Word of God.
- Old or New Testament?
I believe that many of you who are reading this article have already seen the scene of going into a store or house and finding the Bible open to some Psalm, usually Psalm 91. Or someone having a kidney stone attack takes the Bible and places it on the area of the kidney, seeking relief from the pain. Why is this? Because for many the Bible has become a fetish, an object of magic, thinking that it, by itself, the printed book can do something. In fact, those who do and think this way are no different from those who cling to crystal, coarse salt, rabbit's feet or four-leaf clovers, they just change the object. What is much worse is self-deception, because the Word of God contained in the Bible can do something for me; In other words, the term holy Bible is just an editorial, for sacred is its inspiration – God - as Peter says in his second epistle.
The power of this inspiration only becomes evident if we transform the letter of the scripture into the word of life. Once embodied, made conscious, and known, it has the power to transform or generate in us that which can be for good or for evil (II Timothy 3:16), the aroma of life unto life, or the aroma of death unto death.
The proof of this is history itself, when in the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages, Catholic Christianity prohibited the Bible from being in the hands of mere mortals, and it was said that the only one who had the power to read and interpret it was the church itself, and almost a thousand years in this state was considered a catastrophe, because the church read it, but did not know how to interpret it; Then came the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century and the opposite of Catholic Christianity, the Protestant Reformation placed a Bible in the hands of every peasant, but diseases were not cured either, only the symptoms changed, first that of ignorance and then of interpretative error; It is proven that one society or another has not become better, that is why it is an aroma for good or for evil, it does as much harm as it is misinterpreted.
Therefore TODAY, with the hundreds of sects, religions and heresies, the “doctrinal” basis of their beliefs is the Bible itself.
The country with the highest rate of spiritual Christians is Brazil, and the Bible is the basis for this. The same happens with the so-called “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, the highest rate of followers in the world is in Brazil, and they walk around with the Bible in their hands, but never the Word of God in their hearts.
The invitation of the Gospel is different, the Gospel invites us to take the Bible out of our hands and place it in our hearts.
It invites us to abandon the fetish of the book and transform it into life for those who believe, therefore the sacred is not the book, never was, but rather its inspirer, God.
The Bible is the book, the Word is life, the Bible is an object, the Word is a commandment, the Bible can be historical, pedagogical, scientific, archaeological, the Word of God is immutable, and goes beyond the ephemeral.
And why are there so many mistakes in interpreting the Bible? Simple: For the sole reason of not understanding the privilege of the church, the privilege of grace and its dispensation.
The Gospel of John, which leaves the earthly and visualizes the ethereal in its writings, begins by saying that in the beginning was the Word, and the same Gospel in chapter six is an invitation from Jesus to feed on this word, this representation of the bread that is Himself.
With this, John teaches us that EVERYTHING that was before Jesus became incarnate existed to be fulfilled in the Eternal Christ. In other words, everything that was before, whether it was the word or the Old Testament period, was fulfilled without restriction in Christ Jesus, existed only so that the fullness of time would be fulfilled, and the mystery was revealed to the Church, to Him who was hidden, concealed in the bosom of the Father, yet always as an action in the history of men, has already been fulfilled, revealed and explained in Christ Jesus. And this lack of knowledge and awareness is what is lost in the interpretation of the Word of God today – the majority.
Paul says in Timothy that ALL scripture is divinely inspired by God, where he (Paul) preached the law and the prophets, but he always did this, interpreting the law and the prophets in Jesus, it is ALL inspired, but each text, chapter, letter or figure inscribed for me before Christ, always, without exception, is interpreted through Jesus. That which matches what Jesus taught, spoke, looked at, embraced, rebuked, sought, abandoned everything he did and even what he stopped doing is what SERVES for me TODAY as interpretation and Word of God for me, Church as the body of Christ.
They get lost in wanting to be David, Samson, Moses, Gideon, Jephthah, Joshua, Samuel, Elijah… But few want to follow in the footsteps of Christ, simply because the Gospel is unbearable.
Unbearable, because it undoes all my natural and carnal nature, where what we call elevated, he says is worthless, where what we can love, God can hate and what we hate, God can be loving. Unbearable because it reflects our own image, sinful and fallen, and makes us understand that only Grace is possible for us, unbearable because it demands to be deconstructed, and to be rebuilt on the rock – Your word. Unbearable because I have to be ground, to be transformed into a new vessel, to receive the newness of God's life.
My invitation is to take the Bible out of your hands and place it in your heart.
“In the past God spoke in many ways through our fathers and the prophets, but TODAY he speaks through his Son.” (Holy Spirit – Inspiring – to the Hebrews).
Fabiano Moreno